CNTP325

Media Sports and Society is a course designed for students interested in researching and examining sports and media as an extension of popular culture in society. Classroom discussions do not presume in depth experiences in sports or a detailed knowledge of sports jargon and statistics. The goal is to push students to think more critically about sports and how sports are related to their social lives. We will use concepts, theories, history and research as tools that will enable you to "dig into" sports and see them as more than activities that simply reflect the world we live in. The course will also trace and examine electronic media history and the transformations of sport and leisure from Roman and Greek ritualistic ceremonies to high-tech sports-entertainment spectacles. Combining media-sports history, with revealing mass-media research, the course will also examine the enormous impact media and sports has on issues of gender, race, sociology, politics and psychology of human behavior associated with sports. Equally important, the course will carefully examine multi-disciplinary issues and major events connected with the emergence of sports as a global-commercial enterprise.